


Setting the Course

by kiev4am



Series: Rescue Camp [2]
Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: 'Two fools sitting on two crates', Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, M/M, Overwrought Victorian Handholding, Slow Communication, Very Belaboured Cartography Metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 16:01:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20392354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiev4am/pseuds/kiev4am
Summary: As the saved Expedition prepares to move on, Francis Crozier chooses his road home.  A sequel toStories Yet To Tell.





	Setting the Course

A man at sea knows the map and his bearings are everything. But sometimes the map is wrong; sometimes the map is incomplete, lines bitten through by open, empty space. Nothing more lifeless or more dreadful to a captain than the bland white horrors of an unfilled map. They are the unplaces, the other side, numinous and terrible in their purity; in ancient times, cartographers would sooner hide those blanks with fanciful monsters than leave the void unchallenged. And yet ships would still be ordered out, floated on a thread of pride and faith to test the margins of the world. Francis Crozier has made such voyages before, enlarged the maps himself and been honoured for it, charting coasts as pale and adamant as the parchment they are inked on. A conceit beyond perilous, he thinks now: to take real lives, real men and marry their fortunes to a half-drawn sheet of paper. Remove the earnest regulations, the thick brocade of naval pomp and ceremony, and the enterprise begins to seem like conjury, reckless as a séance. Ships gliding like planchettes, writing Empire's dreams upon the water.

Here in Rescue Camp - the camp he feared would be their last, this cradle of hope that came so close, so very close to being their grave - Francis knows his days of mapmaking are over. It is not that he will never sail again, or that he scorns the practice of discovery. But a part of him lives in the white spaces now; the ice has taught him lessons he will not forget, and has no wish to. Sitting in the tent with Silna and the Netsilik elders, he has promised what little he can of secrecy, of withdrawal and respect. The unknown lands are not unknown to their own people, and sometimes the monster at the map's end is no draughtsman's folly - Francis knows now in his chastened bones that this was not his map to make, although its marks have burned him.

But there remains to Francis one last task of navigation - one bearing to resolve here, now, before he reaches England and its ever-awkward shallows. Somewhere along the way a map he thought he knew by heart has changed by slow, intent degrees; that or the earth has tilted, turned the tide of its magnetics in an unforeseen direction. Yet in this instance he feels quiet, enthralled more than afraid, and the unmapped spaces do not deter him; rather, they draw him in. A smaller scale than the venture lately ended: small and inward, with vastly fewer souls to carry home. Just one soul, he thinks. Perhaps two.

"Are you certain this is wise, James?"

James Fitzjames, captain of the lost _Erebus_, second in command of the disastrous Franklin Expedition, sits on the rickety cot in his battered field coat, pulling on the scuffed and split remains of once-fine monogrammed boots. He is cadaverously thin and sallow from his illness - lantern-jawed, fingers like twigs - but as he puts on his grimy officer's cap he looks up at Francis through his ragged uncut hair and smiles, and the world turns warm. It's just the sort of crooked, lit-fuse smile to make Francis wonder ruefully how well off he might be if he had an English pound for every time some well-meaning fool had asked this man that question. Given James' exploits, there ought to be a town-house in it.

James stamps the boots snug, takes up the crutches propped against the bed, then holds them out pointedly to Thomas Jopson.

"Goodsir warned you not to overstretch, James."

"Goodsir _also_ said improvement was essential, Francis. I can't go on forever on those things with Blanky mocking my form at every turn." James' voice is scratchy but amused. When he first began his regime of recovery - tottering on the crutches, muscles wasted from sickness and disuse - Thomas Blanky was there beside him, agile as a tumbler on his own set of sticks, offering robust encouragement, gentle advice and just the right amount of jibing humour. Since then James has walked every day, gaining strength and stamina as he goes; sometimes with Blanky or another crewman for company, more often with Francis. "The ice axe, Jopson, if you please."

Lieutenant Thomas Jopson - fully hale now, droll and indefatigable as ever - hands it across with theatrical flair, as if presenting a knight with his favoured sword. James braces the axe with one hand, testing its support.

"You are," Francis says evenly, "the stubbornest man I have ever met." A small sound prompts him to glance sidelong. "Did you say something, Thomas?"

"Not a word, sir."

Francis lobs a mock glare at his former steward, but it's futile; Jopson has long ago perfected the art of grinning with only his eyes while the rest of his face remains faultlessly solemn. He turns back to his second, who regards him with the sunny innocence of a man who's only just pulled his face straight. Insubordinate wretches, both. Fighting his own smile, he gives his most exaggerated sigh. "If you insist on this, James…"

James says nothing; he simply looks at Francis, light and appraising, then lifts his arm out to him and waits as if the only outcome in the world is that Francis will take hold of it and hoist him to his feet. Which, of course, it is. So familiar, Francis thinks; so familiar, James, and yet so newly intriguing. Levering him upright, he feels every bone in James' arm through his layered sleeves. "Christ, James, you're a bag of sticks. We do _have_ food now, you know."

"Are you going to mother-hen me all the way back to England, Francis?"

"Yes, I bloody am."

Jopson holds back the tent-flap to let them pass; Francis catches his smirk and meets it with a quelling arch of eyebrow. "I see the Pole has moved again," James notes dryly.

Francis follows his gaze. "That'll be the Doctor looking out for you. Though if he'd known you were leaving the crutches behind, he'd likely have dragged it closer." James doesn't retort, but one mittened hand drops to Francis' shoulder and shoves him companionably.

They start their customary trek, Francis matching himself to James' cautious, listing pace. The air is bone-dry and bitter, the ice axe crunches in the gravel, and Francis concentrates rather tensely on _not_ hindering James' exercise and dignity by taking his arm each time he feels him waver, or calling attention to his frequent catches of breath. As always, he remembers another walk - longer, with a cairn at the end of it and confessions at the turn, warmth flourishing between them in defiance of the ice and fog. Their goal today is humbler and less fraught. Out beyond the perimeter, at the foot of a low scree-slope, 'the Pole' is a pair of upturned Goldner's crates. They have been used as target and rest-point by every convalescent in the camp since John Bridgens set them up for his walks with Henry Peglar. Simple, improvised therapy: each man begins with the crates a dozen paces from the infirmary; he picks his way shakily towards them, with or without help, sits down upon one of them to gather his strength and then walks back, repeating if he feels he can; each day the crates are moved a little farther out. James will be the last to use them. His impatience to be well again - his dismay at holding back the longed-for journey home - is as transparent to Francis as it is understandable. In James' position he would feel the same, he knows; but as wonderful as it is to have James back, upright and alert and sardonic beside him, Francis wishes he would spare himself a little.

Around them the camp is a symphony of clatter, folding and shrinking as the day of departure nears; Silna's people are pragmatic - they are staying, after all - but the Fort Resolution men are readying themselves to lead the march out and the last of Franklin's crews are more than glad to follow. A mixed band from both parties has already left for the ice-locked _Terror_, barbs of anxiety clawing at Francis for the welfare of those last brave men left aboard. Some naval tents are down, Terrors and Erebuses doubling up their berths so that the boat-sledges can be packed ahead of time. Even officers sleep two or three together now, Francis with James in what was formerly the smallest sick-tent. As dauntless as the men are in their preparations - as immensely proud as Francis is to watch the return of their noisy seagoing verve after the torments they've endured - he feels, and shares, the edge of desperation in their efficiency. Sharp in all their minds is the spectre of the place this might have been: wind moaning in the buckled frames of half-collapsing tents, the boats upturned, the books and clocks and crested silver of their sentimental madness strewn back across King William Land in pitiful, outlandish train; boots, pair after pair, protruding motionless from unhitched canvas. Sometimes in the grey whistling stillness of the Arctic night Francis has felt that vision clutch so tightly that he has struggled from his cot to the tent-flap, heart stuttering, to re-anchor himself in the sights and sounds of the living camp. Sometimes on such a night he has looked beyond a flickering fire and caught the haggard eye of a crewman equally affected; sometimes he wakes James with his blundering, or it's James who sits up wild-eyed, hounded from sleep by nightmares that are really memories. No hardship for Francis to stay up with him at those times, talking quietly, lying in his bag or settled on the edge of James' cot, listening for the wry return of his humour, searching the half-light for his smile. The hardship comes ironically when Francis imagines himself in England, James no longer this constant presence at his side. He finds such emptiness inconceivable - a numb ache, like early frostbite, surrounds the very thought of it - yet also feels a twinge of guilt for his ingratitude; just days ago, it seems, he would have given up every future minute of James' company, surrendered every word or laugh or handclasp, if only the man would _live_.

"Strange," James says now. "This place. This endless light. So drained of colour, but I'm - used to it now." His voice drags, distressingly wheezy; the ice axe yaws precariously under his weight and Francis clenches his teeth on the admonishments that would no doubt earn him an eye-roll. "I can't remember what green looks like, outside of Goodsir's medicine bottles."

"I know what you mean."

"I can imagine England, but I can't quite - see it." James ducks his head, digging with the ice axe. "Like looking at a set of watercolours. Something under glass. Precious, but illusive. Almost - invented."

Silently, Francis thinks that no-one could possibly have invented England on purpose. "It'll feel real enough when we get there, James."

"Too real in parts," he mutters. His tone makes Francis look at him, but he's squinting into the middle distance, eyes hidden under his cap.

By the time they reach stone's throw of the crates, talk has become impossible: James is audibly breathless and his pace has slowed to a shuffle, though his refusals of help have been as maddeningly cavalier as Francis knew they would be. Francis has just determined that, pride be damned, he will use his last resort - a captain's order - when James lurches, freezes in place, then says, "_Damnation_."

For all his vigilance, Francis is almost too slow. The ice axe clatters away; James' knees almost strike the ground before Francis can arrest his fall, grabbing one arm and a fistful of coat and taking for an instant the entire rangy exhausted weight of him before James wrests back the shreds of his balance, cursing under his breath. His hat lies upside-down on the stones. They stagger drunkenly until Francis stabilises his support, pulling James' arm across his shoulders, hitching his free arm round his waist. "Steady," he says. "Steady."

"Sorry," James manages through gritted teeth.

Francis squeezes him. "Don't be daft." But as he manhandles them both towards the crates a raw echo of that word, _sorry_, sends the world around him whirling into pieces. For one hellish instant he has the bow of a boat-sledge under his elbow; the sledge is stalled and James is lying in it, limp as rags, wounds seeping, one bright dark eye ringed savagely in blood. _Are you comfortable, James?_ \- such a travesty of a question and yet he'd asked it, pleading with the cosmos to make the comfort real just for a moment; even, God help him, tried to make James laugh. Francis blinks, staring fervently ahead. He remembers James' grin in the boat-sledge, its valiant bloodied beauty like a fish-hook to his guts. He feels James' ribs now, so cursedly stark, feels every breath James takes expand beneath his bracing arm and a thousand threads of life, warmth, need and panic seem to knot and snarl together through the chambers of his own labouring heart.

James sighs like a wraith as he sinks to the nearest crate. Francis walks back, retrieves the axe and James' hat; James watches him return, elbows lodged on knees. His voice is hoarse with chagrin. "Well, you were right. I'm stuck. My legs are like wet rope."

"There's no hurry, James. We'll wait here until you feel stronger - or until Goodsir sends out a rescue party, whichever's first."

"I'm _sweating_, Christ. Absurd." James reaches up, mops his forehead with the back of one fingerless glove. "Seems my vanity's quite ingrained, after all."

"Rubbish," Francis says sternly. "I'd've done the same damn thing and you know it. We all want off this blasted rock."

James smiles. "Well, thank you for not saying it."

"Saying what?"

"'Best walker in the service.' I'm sure it pained you to resist."

"It wasn't even in my mind," Francis says honestly. James looks at him; his eyes crease as if staring into the sun. They're out of the wind and Francis wishes he'd brought a pipe, at the same time knowing this trivial thought for the evasion that it is. His awareness of James is profound; in this brief inlet of privacy, of quietude, he feels the air throng with words he might say and has no wit to choose even one of them. More than that, he sees the sudden slump of James' shoulders, the disconsolate averted angle of his face behind his hair, and feels a stab of worry. "James?"

Slowly James reaches into his coat, brings something from an inner pocket. Smooth and grey: Silna's boat, her handcarved _Erebus_ or _Terror_, the little talisman she'd made for James while he'd lain raving in his fever. He stares down at it, small in his hands, and then begins to turn it, round and round. "We'll not see her again," he murmurs. "After all she did for us, unearned, unasked, we'll leave this place and never see her more. Seems wrong, somehow."

"Only to us, James. Not to her. We must each be where we belong."

James huffs a laugh. "Sometimes I wonder where I belong."

Francis watches the little boat spin, stern over bow, in James' worn fingers. From his higher vantage he glimpses the new-healed skin along James' hairline, smooth as a burn scar, and is almost stricken by a rush of tenderness. "Goodsir has asked to stay," he says eventually.

That brings James' head up, at least. "_Has_ he indeed? With what intention?"

Francis sits down on the other crate. He thinks a long moment before he speaks, rather slowly. "He cares for Silna, that much is clear. _How_ he cares, in what way, is not for me or any man to judge. But it is not so simple a thing. He wants to learn and share the Netsilik way of life, but I think it is not all for her. Goodsir is a seeker, a scholar, a true child of the Discovery Service. He loves her, yet he also loves this place."

The little boat has stilled. "And what was your answer?"

They are sidelong to the camp; Francis stares forward to the pale horizon as his thoughts reach past Silna and Goodsir to other understandings glimpsed or reckoned: to Bridgens and Peglar, to Jopson and Little, to his own close-guarded, brittle sensibilities. "I'm of no mind, now, to deny any man the bonds he makes in such a place as this, in such straits as we have come through," he says at last. "I agreed. I will carry his letter of resignation to the Admiralty, and others for his family. I have secured his solemn promise that he will deliver a letter at Fort Resolution once a year at minimum. And I shall leave him all our unused message canisters." Sensing James' gaze, Francis turns. "You approve?"

Angular and ascetic as it is, James' face can manifest a disconcerting softness. He nods once, twice, his eyes holding fast to Francis. "'There is wonder here.' He told me that, once. I was in no great mood to agree at the time, but lately I - " He stops; glancing at him, Francis notes the familiar tension of James' jaw as he worries the inside of his cheek.

"What troubles you?" he asks quietly. "Tell me, James."

James looks up. His gaze is searching, half-defiant and a little bitter, the same expression he'd worn on the walk back from the cairn. He smiles, self-mocking. "I'm _afraid_, Francis. As glad as I am that we're alive... I'm afraid of going back. That's a fine joke, isn't it?"

Francis says nothing in the small pause; just waits, carefully.

"When we reach home, we'll be plagued with scrutiny. There'll be celebrations, gatherings, ceremonies, endless naval theatrics. You know it. Writings in the papers, speeches... even without the Passage found, even without the worst that we could tell them, it'll be a circus. And I…" He shakes his head. "I don't remember how to do it."

"You believe you'll get the brunt of it?" When James doesn't answer, Francis nods thoughtful agreement. "I'm afraid you may be right, James. The Admiralty is still - the Admiralty. You'll be seen as Sir John's proxy, his officer more than mine, and others will pick up that theme." He smiles to think of it - James feted and honoured, London hanging on his every word - and is distantly amused at how much those toils of naval favouritism once chafed at him. "You've a better face for the role than I do. And a sweeter temper."

"I don't agree." For an instant, James stares at him with such openness that Francis feels it on his face like warmth, like light, and his chest constricts. "It should be you. You had command. You led us through this hell and out."

"Not alone, I didn't. Don't fret, James; I promise I'll be more than comfortable on the sidelines." Then, because the moment seems to have a weight he does not yet know what to do with - or perhaps only because he misses James' grin - he adds impishly: "At least, I suspect, we'll soon settle the question of what a biographer would make of you."

"Oh God." With a despairing noise, James covers his face. "Do you think it's too late to beg Silna's people for sanctuary?"

"I'm not sure you've the makings of a seal hunter, James. It requires great stillness and silence."

"Slander." The voice behind the hands is muffled but indignant. "I'll have you know I can be wholly still and silent when I wish to be."

"Ah." Francis nods sagely. "Nothing in the last three years has called for it, I suppose." His prize is a cracked splutter of laughter.

"You're _terrible_."

"So I've been told." Francis grins, impenitent. He is hiding himself in levity and knows it, but there is so _much_ comfort in this gentle push and shove between them now. No friction in it, no rancour, just a dancing slyness that makes him feel light-headed - at once foolish and soulful. Symptoms he has had no trouble naming, and there cuts the map's edge. Francis could make this warm, flimsy banter sustain him to the end of his days if he knew that to seek for more would lose him James completely; but he does _not_ know, and it is not in his nature to leave a thing untried, unsighted, however painful: the urge to speak gnaws like a sore, and he _still_ does not have the words.

James drops his hands. The little boat resumes its tortured, whirlpool motion. "Ridiculous," he sighs. "Here we sit, at the ends of the earth, and I'm thinking of English drawing-rooms as if _they_ are unknown country."

"After all you've been through, James, I'd say you can think what you damn well please."

"And if I spoke one tenth of those thoughts in company, there'd be uproar."

"There'd be a few less drawing-rooms to suffer in, you mean."

"I can't be him, Francis."

"...Sir John?"

James shakes his head. His voice is at its rasping lowest, that gravel-rough reverberation Francis imagines he can feel in the ground, in the crates, in the bones of his own chest. "The man they're expecting. That man I built to hide inside of."

"James..."

"I'm out of stories, Francis. There are no splendid tales to be made from this, and I can't invent them; I couldn't find the words now even if I wished it, and I've forgotten how to lie. I'm not him. I don't want to go backwards, Francis. I don't want to go back to _that_."

With a lurch, the boat slips loose. Faster than thought Francis catches it, pressing it back into James' palm, one hand cupping his wrist while the other comes down to fold James' chilly, half-gloved fingers round the little carving. James looks up with a start - a dark and heavy stare - but Francis holds fast beneath its weight, his answer as instinctive and sincere as it was on their walk from the cairn. "That man you speak so slightly of is no mere fiction, James. I've grown rather accustomed to him, these past few years; he has brought me great comfort, stories and all - and I don't believe, in any rendering of any one of those stories, that he ever told a single falsehood. Shameless embroidery, most certainly. But lies? Never." Helplessly he tightens his grip, unable to keep the vehemence out of his voice at the thought that James - even here, even now - should yet doubt himself. "You'll go back as what you _are_ \- what you have always been - a fine, brave man, an _uncommon_ man, and entirely his own."

James looks down at his hand, entangled in both of Francis.' They have clasped hands before, in more extremity than this, but for an instant the wind seems to catch and still about them, the camp noise dwindling to a murmur. Francis could let go; he likely should; but instead he watches the pinch of colour rising on James' cheekbones as the moment stretches like a fraying thread and still neither of them disengages.

At long last, James' mouth twitches. "Embroidery?" he repeats.

"Yards of it. I retract nothing."

James chuckles. "Indeed, I know one solution to my drawing-room problem. I'll simply refuse all engagements unless you too are attending."

"That's hardly fair to me," Francis protests automatically. James' hand is very warm.

"Misery loves company." James' voice is still husky; the flippant phrase drags in the middle like a overladen sledge.

"You forget the Admiralty, and its ways. My invitations may be few and far between."

James' grin widens. "I'm _counting_ on it, Francis."

Francis looks at him, beguiled. A strange thought has been growing, that for all he has laid bare James is talking around something, the way a man might sketch a difficult shape by filling in where it is _not_; that this circuitous talk of home and self and deathly drawing-rooms encloses, like two hands, a question. Some questions they all share now, hoarding them close, turning them in the sleepless hours: what awaits me on my return; how shall I live; what manner of man am I, if not of _Terror_ or of _Erebus_? And, trailing in the undertow, in the soft unease of their survivors' bond, one more: must we part company, at last? An image unfurls in his mind - a ship close to shore, a hand held out to catch a line… hope rises, almost unbearable, and he treads it like thin ice as he speaks.

"Nonsense, James. We must all be where we belong, yes? And you most definitely belong in society, one way or another. Even if you _could_ forego your stories, you wouldn't last a month housebound; you'd curl up like some exotic plant, unwatered."

"Exotic plant," James snorts. "Transplanted _and_ mislabelled. I'm serious, Francis. The life of an intractable curmudgeon begins to look quite congenial."

"Speaking as an intractable curmudgeon, I've never found it so. And I've years of experience, James."

"Well, perhaps you should retire. Leave the curmudgeon field to younger men."

James' eyes shine with glee. They are talking of nothing, Francis thinks, nothing at all. He feels suddenly certain that _now_ would be the time to loosen his hands, but as he makes to do so he is stopped, caught fast. Somehow James has freed his thumb and Francis feels it on his outer knuckle: a tiny pressure, deliberate and distinct; in its very stealth and smallness lies an intimate coinage far past ordinary handclasps. Francis has known such gestures before, scores of them hurriedly exchanged in coaches and hallways and dining rooms before genteel detachment under the Franklins' watchful eyes; his entire adult life has made him fluent in the unapproved sign language of clandestine feeling and so he finds, suspended for one weightless moment in the deep of James' eyes, that he cannot breathe.

There must be something in his face, for James laughs and shakes his head. His thumb shifts, minute movements back and forth; much as Francis' had upon James' wrist as he was waking like some miracle from his illness, but with no such mortal excuse. James has always been the one to reach out first, Francis thinks dazedly. On his sick-bed, with feeble hands and teasing words; at Victory Point, telling the one story he had never told before, a leap of faith that must have terrified him in its way; even, God love him, on that fateful night when he had stamped across the snow to _Terror_ to cast Francis' drunken iniquities in his face - yes, even that had been a kind of angry reaching out. The vision of coast and ship returns, and Francis does not know which he is - the one rooted hopelessly on land, watching it pass by, or the one drifting just beyond reach, rudderless, waiting to be gathered in. More unknown ground than that beneath his feet. And it may all be in his head, for all that. Far off the map, he speaks; the edge of the world, the end of vanity indeed.

"I don't believe the… _cheetah_ can change his spots so thoroughly, James. Much better we embrace our respective natures: you go forth, to be the bard of every naval junket, and I remain to read my book or write my letters by the fire, and hear your unvarnished account when you, no doubt the worse for wear, come home to me."

James' eyes flare on that last phrase, though Francis hasn't dared to stress it. He feels it like a fall: the map has changed and on it James is a harbour, not seen clearly until almost too late; he is _here_, and it is devastating. Bereft of subterfuge, he faces him. And then at last James' free hand moves, collapsing over Francis' in a clinging, warm-cold grasp. His long face wooden, his voice more slow and raw than ever scurvy made it. "You would - stay with me?"

Francis answers like a wave - halting, shaken, wild. "I would. I _will_."

They grip breathless, speechless. There is a name that must be spoken and James lays it down between them, infinitely gentle, light as a lock of hair. His caution is warranted; it changes the air like a shout, striking aside the last uncertainty of what it is they talk of, now. "Sophia..."

Maps can be tested; maps redrawn. With a turn of his wrists Francis frees himself, taking both James' bony, beautiful hands, cradling them and closing them round the Netsilik avatar of his battered sailor's soul. Twinges of loss and release as he confesses, scarcely above a whisper: "It is not she who holds my heart now."

"_Francis_."

James drops the boat and clutches Francis' sleeves. His back is turned to camp, his body shielding them from view, and Francis leans into him with a falling sigh, wanting only to press his forehead to James', to feel his warmth and wind-snarled hair against his face. It is enough; it is already far more than they should dare, but James has never in his rocket-like life found a use for timidity and he snags a mad hand in Francis' collar and ducks beneath his guard. No-one could call it a kiss; his mouth just grazes Francis', pressing the very corner of it in clumsy, rough-shaven collision as Francis turns close, close beyond care before James - suddenly, damnably prudent - draws back again; the thing so quick, so haphazard and intense that they both shiver as wind fills the hair's-breadth gap between them. Francis breathes as if pulled from deep water; James' eyes are wide and dark, his scarred fist trembling where it knots in Francis' coat, his face looking, for an instant, absurdly young - such a soft shock of promise and recognition and giddy, drunken triumph that Francis must blink furiously to stop the sight from blurring.

Brighter than the stones, something gleams beside his boot; with a shaking hand he picks up Silna's boat, dusts it carefully on his knee and holds it out to James. James takes it, his eyes on Francis' face; their fingers brush together most unhurriedly and Francis swallows a fierce wish for canvas, walls, a closing door, an English nightfall, for any small fold of seclusion that he and James might pull around themselves and bid the world farewell just for a moment. Unsteady, he stands. His voice feels horribly, boyishly hoarse. "Can you walk?"

James puts on his cap, with its mournful air of authority. He looks to camp, narrows his eyes as if measuring distance; the ice axe stands ready, leaning against his crate. But he does not reach for it; instead he looks up at Francis. Under the cap his eyes dance.

"No," he says. "I don't believe I can. Not without - assistance."  
  
Francis is nonplussed; they have sat for an age, and James must certainly be rested. Then the devilry in James' uncurling grin reaches him like a jumping spark, and his heart turns over and begins to sing. "_James_," he laughs, low. Their arms reach together, their hands brush in passing as, with exaggerated courtesy, he hoists James to his feet. One arm goes round James' waist; James catches his hand and presses it, slides his free arm along Francis' shoulders and takes a fistful of his jacket, Francis anchoring the grip with his own; they fit poorly and then - with a tug of hands, a shift of hips - completely. Francis breathes deep, feels the answering heave of James' chest against him; he is warm all down his side, warmer still from the knowledge that such solace was fully James' intention. He risks a glance, sees James luminous and grinning; it is a wrench to look away, to move at all, but at last he cinches James close, pulls them into a lumbering walk.

It is an ungainly journey; somewhat distracted, the invalid first outpaces Francis and then treads upon his feet until they are both suppressing snorts of laughter. The wind comes up as they approach the camp, cook-fires sputtering, figures running for shelter or to secure loose canvas, and Francis scans the settlement with reflexive care, searching out faces, assessing mens' postures, accounting the state of sledges, tents, provisions. At last he turns his head, gaze reaching far beyond the jumble to the flat and grey horizon; with a sailor's certainty, he knows that he is facing west.

James feels him slow. "Francis," he murmurs, close beneath the wind. Heavy and light, his hand kneads Francis' shoulder through his coat.

That way, Francis thinks; somewhere that way, around the corkscrews and reversals of the Arctic maze and through the gulfs of many oceans, lies the place he taught himself to call a home. He closes his eyes against the rush of it, absorbing it like sun upon his face: how far off course he'd been, how long and strenuously he had misread. For home transcends all countries and coordinates; with no shadow of another separation, it - _he_, James - is at his side, and in his arms.

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't anticipate a sequel to Stories Yet To Tell, but these damned decorous Victorian men wouldn't stop talking. Also, it began to nag at me that I hadn't answered John Bridgens' question - 'he wonders if they know yet' - and I wanted to at least set their feet on the path. It's been a long time in the making, because I love them too much.


End file.
